[csb6]

This is a headline straight out of 2005 (or 1995): “The World Wide Web is Serving Up Sex and Drug Pictures to Minors”. Very much a moral panic headline.

I wonder what material impact seeing a video of boobs or people doing drugs actually has on minors. Like are they supposedly thinking, “I am going to go have unsafe sex now because I saw people do it on TikTok”?

Social media is so ephemeral and detached from the actual physical acts depicted in it that I don’t see how seeing “immoral” posts would materially affect a child’s behavior. If your kid is receiving and retaining subliminal moral instruction from browsing social media it means they are not getting it from elsewhere.

[unmole]

Tobacco companies deployed agressive product placement in Hollywood to make cigarettes cool. Because they knew that people are more likely to engage in behaviour that is seen as cool. While there isn't corporate action pushing drug use, its depiction in popular culture does have the same effect.